For the past four years Facebook has been a major force in driving traffic to my website. But over the past few months my Facebook traffic has drastically decreased, even though my Facebook audience has increased to well over 7,000+ fans.

Comments

This is a great post and I enjoyed reading it. I've just relaunched my blog the beginning of Oct. and I've been focusing on driving traffic to it without the use of SEO and only utilizing social media and other high leveraged traffic outlets. This has worked phenomenally for me and I've been able to drive a large amount of traffic to my blog is a very short amount of time.

Facebook is in my top 3 referrers and although the Edgerank update had been an issue for some, I don't really see where my traffic has dropped from them, other than when I'm not as active on their platform as I usually am.

Thanks for your "post text only" tip. I may try this as well. I've been testing another tactic to get more views to my posts by posting large pictures with a short description, a link to my blog post and a call to action and this seems to working rather well for me too.

I agree that's it's very important to diversify your traffic sources. And, Facebook actually making you pay $50 to reach the rest of your OWN fans in my opinion is quite ridiculous. As you mentioned, list building and email marketing is pivotal - you can drive more traffic from your own email list and a much higher quality.

I found your article on BizSugar.com. This website has been a great source of traffic for me as well and is actually in my top 5 referrers. Thanks for sharing this with our community. I appreciate your insights!